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Book 2 for the Cozy Mystery Challenge

Yes, indeed. I finished reading my second book for the Cozy Mystery Challenge ! Murphy's Law , by Rhys Bowen, had been sitting in the hallway for almost a year. I bought it after I finished Royal Flush , the last book in Bowen's Royal Spyness series, which was published in July, 2009. Because I was so taken with Bowen's story-telling, I decided to try reading her Molly Murphy series. Murphy's Law is the first in the series. It had won the Agatha, Reviewer's Choice, and Herodotus awards. Molly Murphy is the main character. She is a ballsy, well-educated 24-year old Irish immigrant living in New York during the Tammany Hall times. The story opens with her running away from home because the master's son tried to have his way with her. She had kicked him away and he cracked his head when he fell. Molly got on a train to London and ended up on a ship to America. She took the identity of a dying woman who had persuaded Molly to take the woman's children to their

Rambling Friday

This morning I woke up with a stuffy nose. The husband stirred beside me. The mama scraped a chair on the floor in the kitchen below. She was either about to eat breakfast or she had finished. "What time do you think it is?" asked the husband. "Time to dust the room," I answered. I got up, picked up my glasses, and headed to the bathroom. As I walked by the stairs, I glanced down at the clock in the living room. 9:30. The mama had slept later than usual. The husband had slept his eight hours. I was lacking again. Oh, well, what does it matter? The three of us have not had to answer to a boss's clock in years. Only our own. My self-discipline comes and goes. There is so much about which to be disciplined. House cleaning, for one. Writing, for another. Finding writing jobs, a third.  Exercising, most indubitably, a fourth. And then there is downsizing our stuff that has been in storage for years now. The list of what I need to work on keeps growing rather than sho

Wordless Wednesday

The Octogenarian Pruning Mama I've joined the Wordless Wednesday linky party today. Head on over and check out photos of other bloggers.

The July 23rd Date

Were you wondering what the husband and I finally did on our 23rd date last Friday ? Yes or no, I'm here to tell you. Well, actually to show you some photos of different things we saw as we stopped here and there. Wild chickens are continually crossing the streets in San Juan Bautista. Here's a bee that knows a good thing when it sees it! Taggers will leave their marks on anything standing! Can you see the turtle and the chimpanzee sitting on it? In a fancy boot store in Carmel-by-the-Sea, I peeked at the price tag of a pair of cute ankle cowboy boots. Over $1,000! And, they were not as elaborate as these. I didn't even want to know how much they were. Are those golf balls edible? Probably. Up close, they looked real enough not to eat! Cute handbags. Do you think that arm belongs to the bag or an actual human being? How to describe downtown Carmel-by-the-Sea? Drink and eat, see, shop. Or, coffee house, art gallery, boutique. This is the tallest and hunkiest eucalyptus tree

First Read for Cozy Mystery Challenge

The spell is broken, thanks to the Cozy Mystery Challenge ! and to the numerous power outages we had yesterday. For most of Sunday, I kicked back in a comfy easy chair and read U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton. Grafton is known for her mystery series featuring Kinsey Millhone, a private detective who works in the fictional town of Santa Teresa, which resembles Santa Barbara. Every year or two since the mid 1980s, Grafton has published another adventure of the 30-ish, tough, and vulnerable Kinsey. Some people call Grafton the alphabet mystery author. Her first book is called A is for Alibi , her second B is for Burglar , and so on.  Four more titles and she'll be out of letters. I wonder if by letter Z that will be the end of Millhone. I hope not. In U is for Undertow , a young man hires Kinsey to check out the truth of his memory. When he was six years old he came across two guys burying something in the woods. He thinks that what he saw was them burying the body of the four-y